A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

Compacted by these reciprocal duties and privileges, but still more truly and effectually by ordinances and sacraments, and by a divine and mystical agency which animates all with one spirit, and sanctifies all with one grace, clergy and laity together form but one body. The clergy alone no more constitute the Church, either in a spiritual, in an ecclesiastical, or in a political sense, than do the laity alone; and the Church has no existence, no duties, no rights, no authority, except as it is composed of both clergy and laity. It is because they forget this that we continually hear persons speaking of the Church as it were only an hierarchy. If regulations of any kind are proposed for the prosperity of the Church, they start at the sound as if it meant the aggrandizement of the clergy: if the Church is said to be in danger, they only think of the fall of mitres and the impoverishing of benefices. The real truth is, that the Church’s privilege and authority belong to the whole body, whoever may be their immediate recipients and executors; and whoever maintains them, whether he be lay or clerical, maintains his own rights and his own patrimony.

And the part of the laity in the Church is no more purely political, than the part of the clergy is purely spiritual. Nothing could be less just than to deny to the laity a spiritual character, although they are not appointed to spiritual offices. The sacraments which the ministers distribute, and the laity partake with them, are spiritual; the one (that is, holy baptism) originating, the other (that is, the blessed eucharist) continuing a spiritual character in the recipients. The minister offers up spiritual lauds and prayers for his flock. Even external discipline has a spiritual object, and would be both absurd and unjust, if exercised over those who are not members of the Church spiritual as well as visible. And, finally and principally, the ever blessed fountain and stream of a true spiritual character, without whom no external sacrament or rite can be to any purpose, even the Holy Ghost, is purchased by Christ for his whole Church; and sent from Him and from the Father, not exclusively upon any order of men, but upon all, from the highest order of the clergy to the least and lowest of the laity who maintain their spiritual character. As the precious unguent poured upon Aaron’s head, flowed not only over his own beard, but even to the skirts of his clothing; so does that spiritual stream of a holy character flow from the Head of the Church, not on those only whose office is sacred, but on those also whose character is sanctified; not only upon those whose part it is to govern, but on those also who must obey in spiritual things. And so it is that the mystical temple of Christ “groweth together in Christ, which is the Head; from whom the whole body, fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body.”

And this is, indeed, the right clue to the interpretation of those passages of Scripture in which all Christ’s people are designated as priests, and which have been perverted into an authority for the exercise of clerical functions by the laity. It is the spiritual character, not the spiritual office, of every Christian, of which St. Peter speaks, when he says, “Ye also, as living stones, are built up, a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices unto God by Jesus Christ.” And again, “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people.” So also when St. John says, “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God the Father, to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever:” and when Moses declares of the Israelites, as they typified the Christian Church, “Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation:” they convey an assurance to us, not of the priestly office, but of the spiritual character and privileges of every member of the Church of Christ.

And it is as partaking in this spiritual character with them that the laity share with the clergy in many other things. They have the same privilege of the Christian altar, and for their children the same privilege of the Christian font: the promises of God to them are the same; and spiritual benefits, both present and future, clergy and laity share together: their duties are almost all of them in common, varying principally in the external manner in which they are to be performed: and even where there is the most apparent exclusion of the laity from the ceremonial, they are by no means excluded from the authority which sanctions the ceremonial. It would be most wicked and presumptuous for a layman to take on himself the ordination of another, or the consecration of the eucharist; but it would be nothing short of heresy, though a new heresy, to deny that the bishop and the priest perform these acts with that authority which is vested in the Church, as a society of faithful men, lay as well as clerical. It is in the name, not of the clergy, but of the Church, that the bishop confirms and ordains; that the minister pronounces absolution and a blessing; that discipline is enforced, and penitents are restored: and in all these cases the minister is the representative and instrument, not of the clergy, nor of his individual bishop, but of the Church at large. But it is not only in the authority and privileges of the Church, but in its responsibility also, that the laity are included. If a Church fall into heresy, or error of doctrine or of practice, though the hierarchy may be the chief instigators and movers of such error, yet the laity, still maintaining their communion, are necessarily involved in their sin. And so, on the other hand, if the laity fall into spiritual error, the clergy also are responsible, and involved in the sin. It mattered not whether it were the heresy of the Nicolaitanes, or the religious indifference of the body of a Church which had left its first love: the candlestick was removed, not from the clergy only in the one case, nor from the laity only in the other, but all were swept away together. The laity among the Arians were not excused because they left the Catholic faith in company with their bishops; nor were those of the clergy, who, in latter days, cast off episcopal authority because of the clamours of the people, thus justified. God only can precisely judge of the degree of sin in parties thus situated; but as a point of sound theory in religion and theology, the clergy are concerned in the errors of their flocks; the laity are involved in the heresies and schisms, and other ecclesiastical crimes, of their bishops and pastors.

This mutual responsibility of clergy and laity would result even from the principles of a civil polity, of the nature of which the Church, as a society, necessarily partakes: but they follow still more manifestly among the consequences of her spiritual union; and are plainly stated in the sacred Scriptures, by the rules of which the Church is ever to be judged. Surely nothing can be clearer than the words of St. Paul, “Whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it; now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.”

Thus we see that, in matters purely spiritual, the laity are very seriously responsible for the proceedings of the Church as carried on, well or ill, by its appointed ministers. How greatly they are interested in the same matters, needs not to be proved at much length; since the validity of the sacraments, the soundness of doctrine, the catholicity of fellowship, certainly concern them quite as nearly as the clergy themselves. But so soon as we take into consideration those matters in which the Church partakes of the nature of a civil polity, we find the interest of the laity in its regulations so much increased, that sometimes they are even more nearly concerned than the clergy themselves. A single line of George Herbert will illustrate these principles; he says,

“The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church says now.”

Here in the Scriptural part, (the propriety and benefit of fasting,) laity and clergy are concerned equally; but so soon as the Church exerts its authority in the way of polity, (to determine the time,) the laity, upon whose secular habits a religious exercise makes a greater incursion, are by far the most concerned. The same thing holds in every rule for the regulation of penance or communion, for the determining of the proper recipients of baptism, the proper candidates for holy orders, and the like. And to go a step farther; there are parts of the ecclesiastical polity which are spiritual only by accident, and indirectly; such as the means used in collecting funds for charitable or religious purposes, and for the carrying on of the government of the Church; and in these the immediate and direct interest of the laity is altogether paramount.

These, which are the true Church principles on the subject of the clergy and the laity, will be sufficient to answer the charge of priestcraft against those of the clergy who enforce sound principles on this subject; and to make those of the laity who wish to act up to the high principles which they profess, feel that as churchmen they possess a sacred character which must not be lightly compromised, and spiritual privileges which they may well think worth contending for, against the low principles of dissenters and quasidissenters.—Poole on the Admission of Lay Members to the Synods of the Church in Scotland.

LAMBETH ARTICLES. Certain articles so called because they were drawn up at Lambeth, in the year 1595, by the then archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London.